


Flicker

by bubblewrapstargirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied Relationships, M/M, Spoilers for the season 12 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 16:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblewrapstargirl/pseuds/bubblewrapstargirl
Summary: The world doesn't last long, after.





	Flicker

Dean doesn't hunt anymore.

He buried Cas’ body not far from the bunker, an empty clearing he covered in wildflowers, the kind that attract bees. He reckons Cas would have liked that. Dean carved him a headstone himself, taught himself masonry for the singular task. Every blooded, scraped finger was worth it; no man deserves to lie forgotten, with only an ugly, impersonal plaque.

It didn't take long for demons to come sniffing round, assuming Dean weak with grief, which was the truth, but not the way they anticipated. He kills anything supernatural that comes within a thirty foot radius,threatening his retreat, but he doesn't seek anything out. Not even Jack, who turns half the world into mindless shuffling sacks of flesh before Sam and Jody devise a way to put him down.

After a year, Sam tries some bullshit immersion therapy, knocking Dean out and dragging him on a hunt. In the end Claire has to do the hunt, because Dean breaks Sam’s arm in two places. They stop talking for a while after that.

Something starts causing people to liquefy: people with knowledge of the occult. The British Men of Letters are suspected. Garth begs Dean to help. It's about that time he dumps all his phones, and empties out the Impala. He's never seen her so stripped, devoid of weapons and charms, save for those painted or carved in.

Dean builds himself a house because it's something to do, and he's sick of the hollow empty spaces in the bunker, taunting him with the swish of a trenchcoat that isn't there. He grows quiet in the new, cosy spaces of his custom built cabin, where he can overlook the final resting place of his love.

The sky turns black, and he turns from the hunters that call his name. Fire falls like rain, and he turns his face away. A huge chunk of the northern hemisphere falls into an abyss, and Dean barely blinks, turning the channel to Looney Tunes. The bright, zany cartoon helps him remember Cas’ most rare, joyful smile.

Dean pictures Cas in the space he has built for himself: angelic fingers brushing along the spines of his beloved books, shiny shoes that would carefully creak along exposed floorboards when Dean sleeps. The trenchcoat is the only thing that hangs from his coat rack, because he couldn't bear to part with it, to never see the familiar shape from the corner of his eye ever again. It no longer smells like Cas, but it is enough to pretend sometimes, that he will step into a room and find Cas there.

After two more years, Sam stops coming round. Dean wonders, idly, if he settled somewhere or took on something too big, but he never finds out, either way.

In the end it is the darkness, though not the primordial kind, that consumes them all. Fissures appear everywhere, rippling across the world, the colour leaching out of everything nearby. Everything rots and dies, in a matter of weeks, before black beams blast out and swallow all they touch. Dean goes in his sleep; clutching the trenchcoat in his weathered hands. It's the most peaceful death he has ever had.

The world collapses in on itself, swallowed under the weight of its own gravity, leaving a sucking wound, the gaping maw of a black hole.

Sam waits many years in his heaven, for a brother that he will never see again; save for endless loops of happy moments, trapped between memories of strangers, with their boring, ordinary lives, who Sam can barely remember.

Mary never returns from the other universe; when she dies, choking on her own blood, her heaven in this place is a lonely one. The Mary and John of this realm were already reunited in paradise, and there was no room for her there.

Dean does not remain in his heaven.

He takes one look at the fake bunker, and turns to push his way out. He digs through tunnels of blinding light, until eventually the light reaches back, with a familiar exasperated fondness, the ghost of a smile and a whisper of his name. Dean gladly folds himself into its eternal, burning embrace.


End file.
